This is a .NET plug-in for AutoCAD that makes it possible for admins to centrally measure the usage times of AutoCAD installations in a corporate network. The storage of the usage data is done anonymously, since it only stores usage data of groups in the database, not of individuals.
After the switch of Autodesk products to named user licensing, it is possible that the usage statistics offered by Autodesk are no longer sufficient for the needs of some organizations. The new usage statistics are only available in the temporal resolution of a whole day. This means that it is only measured whether the Autodesk product was opened once on a certain day.
However, in some cases measurements with a higher temporal resolution are required. For example, this is the case when the departments of an organization want to share the license costs fairly among themselves based on the actual usage. This system solves exactly that problem.
This plug-in only works in tandem with a web service that is also provided as open-source in another repository, which is:
https://github.com/Fachstelle-Geoinformation-Winterthur/acad_usage_measurement_service
You need to install and run the web service first, in order to operate this plug-in.
The installation of this plug-in is quite simple. You can place the plug-in DLL (acad_usage_measurement_client.dll) into the respective plug-in folder. For example, in AutoCAD 2021 this is the following location:
C:\Program Files\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2021\Plugins\acad_usage_measurement_client\acad_usage_measurement_client.dll
Additionally, you need to add a properties text file. It must have the following name: "acad_usage_measurement_properties.txt" and needs to be placed in the same folder as the DLL, like so:
C:\Program Files\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2021\Plugins\acad_usage_measurement_client\acad_usage_measurement_properties.txt
The properties file has to contain information on the URL of the web service in the following form:
server=https://your_server.com/path_to_the_web_service
This plug-in has originally been compiled for and tested with AutoCAD 2017, but it should also work out-of-the-box with all subsequent versions of AutoCAD.
.NET Framework version 4.5 (at least) is required (and of course the Windows version that runs it).